“At present I am so exceedingly content in my quaint pleasant quarters in the midst of so new a working world, that I hardly feel the need of anything beyond; and I do greatly want quiet and rest to ‘recuperate’ as the new word goes. I can’t tell you when I have found so much chance of rest of mind and quiet interest in things wholly unconnected with the old pain,—not for years, I am sure, and I have ready to hand just as much work as I feel able for, and yet no strain on me to do it if I am not able. I can’t tell you the pleasure it gives one simply to see Dr. Sewall in her hospital and especially among her poor patients. She is such a true _Healer_;—so infinitely compassionate and sympathetic, with blue eyes sometimes quite full of sorrow for the people’s pain, yet such strong firm hand and will to remedy even _through_ pain. I say a dozen times a day,—‘Were I not a teacher, I would be a doctor’—if I could. (Nov. 27th.) This hospital life is simply charming. So busy, so simple, so quaint and so interesting! I am entering more and more fully into it daily, and finding more and more nooks which I can fill ... sometimes giving mechanical aid in operations where they want an extra hand, etc. Darling, one very unexpected result is coming out of this new life which I embraced simply for its rest and comfort,—I find myself getting desperately in love with medicine as a science and as an art, to an extent I could not have believed possible. I always associated so much that is repulsive and nasty with it in my mind, but I find that one really loses all sense of that in close contact,—that the beauty of nature’s arrangements and of art’s contrivances absorb one’s mind from everything less pleasant, and I find myself saying to myself a dozen times a day that, did I not feel my life devoted to another object, I would be a doctor straightway. As it is, I mean to use all the time I have in gaining all I can, by observation (for which one so rarely has such a chance) even more than by study, though I find myself devouring all sorts of medical works too, and am quite amazed to find how far even in this little time I am able to understand to a certain extent all sorts of things going on around me, and how _very_ interesting they all become in the new light.... Of course one has access to an enormous medical library here, and the junior doctors are all as ready to help or show me all I want as possible. I in my turn do all I can to take extra work which I can do off their hands. Today the hospital note-book was handed over to me, and I went round with the physicians taking down directions for food, medicines, etc., and then making up the latter and taking them to the wards: all of which was very little for me to do, and very interesting, but a great deal saved for the over-worked junior doctor of the wards. I am really a